Five Things

These kept me highly entertained this week.

1. Parents recount the creepiest things their kids have ever said.

2. Hilarious interview by WNPR reporter Jeff Cohen of his daughters, 3 and 5, after the 5-year-old gave the 3-year-old a horrific haircut.

3. Cue the angel choir: this is what crickets sound like when they're slowed waaaaay down.

4. Hilarity ensues when Jimmy Kimmel hooks up a poor 7-year-old kid up to a fake lie detector and gets all his dirt.

5. Holy hell! I'm not usually much moved by birds, but this encounter with a murmuration of starlings is magnificent.

Five Things

Here's what I got sucked into this week...

1. Beautiful but creepy animated 19th century zoetropes, phenakistoscopes and praxinoscopes.

2. Behind the scenes with Sesame Street, circa 1970s. I always wondered.

3. How to live a kick-ass life, based on quotes from Mark Twain.

4. Clever re-imagined slogans for products and companies.

5. Incredible footage of an ice shove. It would make a good horror movie: Night of the Living Ice

Five Things

Here are my favorites this week:

1. This ad campaign from UN Woman is pretty awesome. I tried their little Google trick and got similar results. We've got a long, long way to go.

2. Believe me, I've had experiences with collection agencies, most of them awful: Rude, abusive and demanding. But this company? Please, let me get these guys next time I get sent to collections.

3. "McDonald's doesn't want to pay its workers more. It wants YOU to pay its workers more."

4. Creepy and/or disgusting Halloween candy. I'd love to be part of a think tank that comes up with these.

5. RIP Lou Reed. This gorgeous, bittersweet animated video features one of my favorite Lou Reed songs.

Five Things

Here's what I've been skulking around looking at this week.

1. Chicago artist Nick Cave (not the musician) has a really incredible show up at the Denver Art Museum. Love.

2. "...Christ, fellas, you really can't complain when their first, last and only solution is to light everything on fire and call it done." More people need to vote in Texas.

3. Really cool animated gifs by artist Zack Dougherty.

4. Sculptures of appliances made of translucent polyester fabric. These look like X-rays.

5. Hoochieween!

Five Things

Here's what I've enjoyed this week:

1. Mean Tweets: Celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves.

2. I love interesting cleaning tips, but I never use them. I should use them.

3. I have a few of these Really Annoying Facebook Friends. I know I'm not one of them, though, because I'm so afraid of being annoying on Facebook that I rarely post.

4. I often don't read this sort of thing on account of being a massive hypochondriac certain that I'm going to die either right now or within the next few months. But this was worth the fear of having to acknowledge that yes, someday I will die. Probably not right this moment, and maybe not in the next few months, but eventually.*  Kinda helps you see more clearly what your priorities in life should be in order to avoid deathbed regrets.**

5. I love stories like this and this.

*Right after I wrote that I had a tiny little panic attack and for about 4 seconds I was pretty sure I was going to drop dead right then.

**Warning: this article contains those annoying links that don't take you anywhere even remotely related to the content. One link is haphazardly attached to the random words "you do" and when you hover over it, it says, "Save money on you do! Offer ends soon!" and gives you a link to what is certain to be some crappy, spammy ad site or something. WTF? Some asshole is just attaching random links to random words, and he (or she) needs to be severely schooled in SEO.

Five Things

Here's what I found interesting this week while procrastinating:

1. If only I could grow facial hair!

2. Weekly illustration challenges!

3. Guy gets ticket for not riding in the bike lane. Proceeds to make a hilarious video of himself crashing into things blocking the bike lane.

4. Eerie photographs of things left behind in abandoned buildings.

5. Ten things Americans waste money on. I'm guilty of all except designer baby clothes and deal websites.

Five Things

Here's what I got sucked into this week while roaming the Internet.

1. "It's like Santa! For your vagina!" Best commercial ever, from Hello Flo.

2. Pictures of goats on cliffs.

3. This woman is a dairy farmer in Finland and makes beautiful, colorful, enormous sculptures of cows out of old machinery and auto parts.

4. Another great edition of Bad Lip Reading

5. I love news bloopers. These are from last month, and there are some really nice gems in there. A few duds, too, but that's the price of voyeuristic entertainment.

Five Things

Here's what I've been enjoying this week!

1. A beautiful commercial that won a gold lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

2. Online interactive maps lets you roam around the world with your mouse arrow and tells you where you are. Fun to play around with. Take the interactive quizzes to see how much you remember from Geography.

3. Anamorphic sculptures that make my brain hurt. You need a special kind of spatial awareness to create these.

4. I never get tired of this version of Aha's "Take On Me"video.

5. I'm really liking this Etsy shop.